TY - JOUR T1 - An assessment of in-field nutrient best management practices for agricultural crop systems with subsurface drainage JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 5A LP - 10A DO - 10.2489/jswc.73.1.5A VL - 73 IS - 1 AU - Andy Ward AU - Andrew Sharpley AU - Kayla Miller AU - Warren Dick AU - James Hoorman AU - John Fulton AU - Gregory A. LaBarge Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/73/1/5A.abstract N2 - Land drainage to support agricultural production can be traced back thousands of years to the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. A ubiquitous drainage need in the Great Lakes region and parts of the Mississippi Basin is subsurface drainage (generally called tile drainage) to remove excess water from fields and improve trafficability. However, it has long been recognized that tile drainage is a main contributor of nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) to water resources in these regions (Kladivko et al. 2004), and more recently studies have shown that tile drainage exports large amounts of phosphorus (P) (King et al. 2015). Nitrogen discharges from subsurface drainage systems are a common contributor to hypoxic zones in saltwater bodies, and dissolved P discharges are the primary cause of harmful algal blooms in freshwater bodies.Here we review in-field best management practices (BMPs) to reduce nutrient losses from fields with subsurface drainage (USDA NRCS 2016). These USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) practice standards can vary from state to state to account for specific conditions that occur in a state.CONSERVATION PRACTICE STANDARD CODE 322: VEGETATED FIELD DITCHES Agricultural drainage ditches (figure 1) can mitigate N and P losses (Moore et… ER -